Aleesa Cohene, SOMETHING BETTER
YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto, 7 March–18 April 2009
The first frames establish the primary dynamic that will be sustained throughout the
narrative: Mother and Child as "natural" residents of the domestic space and Father as a
relative outsider, leaving or asked to leave, returning or asking to return. The dynamic of
the nuclear family is revealed on its final day, at its breaking point and in the painful
process of collapse. Mother, Father, and Child are devastated by betrayal, abandonment,
alienation, bitterness, helplessness, and grief. Their silence signals their despair.
In Aleesa Cohene’s work architecture is a character. The idealized architectural
manifestation of the nuclear family stands intact in SOMETHING BETTER: a temple in a
dream of The Dream. The homes are pleasant and welcoming, the kitchens are comforting
and promise abundance, and the bedrooms are cozy and safe. Cohene represents the
utopian myth by meticulously selecting the textures, colours, patterns, clothing, objects,
and architecture of the 1970s—the era of her own childhood. The illusion of togetherness,
of family is present and seductive. Memory and fantasy mingle to create a
psychological mechanism similar to denial as the architecture blithely enforces the nuclear
family construct.
Yet Cohene’s fractured narratives debunk the myth. The foundation of the home has
structurally collapsed. The loss of Father is painfully palpable and plays itself out against
the idealized middle-class backdrop. The characters’ faces and bodies present the
absence of that which is lost: the dream of unconditional love forever and ever.
The inhabitants’ emotional devastation stands in stark contrast to the nostalgic physical
manifestation of the nuclear family home. Their hearts are crushed and disconsolate.
The temple of unconditional love is contaminated by isolation, sorrow, and hopelessness.
The characters inhabit a traumatic history, experiencing together alone the distressing
rupture of the false promise. Nostalgia is turned on its head. No longer dulling the senses,
the falseness is exposed: Father, Child, Mother are each trapped in their own frame,
perpetually isolated from each other, yet at the same time the trap is their very
relationality, their juxtaposition, a paradox that Cohene has beautifully and subtly
teased out: Father is father because of Child, Mother is mother because of Child,
Child is child because of Father and Mother. Similarly, Father is father because of Mother,
Mother is mother because of Father.
Child is the powerless witness of this unhappy containment. Peering from behind
windows, listening at doors, peeking through keyholes, roaming aimlessly in the
emotionally gutted home, Child has no agency. Estrangement, abandonment, and
betrayal take their toll. Overwhelmed with sorrow, confusion, anxiety, anger, and doubt,
Child observes, mostly in silence, as h/er caregivers’ integrity weakens, their weariness
exposing the gendered artifice they are senselessly re-creating. Mother unconditionally
preserves the appearance of family and stability. She is trapped in the endless cycle of
producing the family meal: the cardinal rite of togetherness. On the brink of collapse she
hoists her will to meet the demands of duty. “It is my job to do everything I can to
make my children part of a normal world, a world of school, and friends, and lovers and
families of their own some day” . Beyond her "maternal instinct" to protect and
nurture her Child, she is the custodian of the nuclear family contract. She molds the
family home into a recognizable physical form while she is powerless to shape/transform
its emotional and spiritual substance. Father is locked outside the home, or returns as
mere guest to graze its surfaces, presumably having violated a fundamental rule of
engagement. Access to the inner sanctum is irremediably forbidden. He is denied access
to the home and emotionally extracted from the familial relationships. He is perennially
shattered, guilty, resentful, helpless, and inadequate. Locked out of his role of
Husband/Father he wanders aimlessly; disempowered and rudderless he seeks comfort in
his previous role of boy-child, playing pinball into the night. Inside and out, the
characters are stunned by the abyss before them, their roles disintegrated, hollow,
pointless.
Child too, in the privacy of h/er bedroom, is caught in the early trappings of gendered
rituals. S/he enacts encoded gender roles: Girl engages in reverie before a ceramic
ballerina and draws on floral wallpaper while Boy watches violent televised cartoons and
reads Mad magazine. Child’s individuation process develops in the midst of this cultural
complexity and duplicity. When s/he responds, “I know,” to Father’s
statement: “What she [Mother] means is that she prefers the senseless pain we inflict
on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves… But I am not afraid of
that solitary pain. In fact, if I do not strip myself of all that clatter and clutter and
ridiculous ritual I shall go out of my fucking mind!” , Child expresses h/er awareness,
doubt, and suspicion of h/er familial environment.
Hope for SOMETHING BETTER cuts in when Child expresses h/er anger and protest
from under a rainbow coloured cloth—traditionally a symbol of inclusiveness, hope,
yearning, and more recently a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride.
S/he mouths the words of a television super hero: “Watching mankind with hatred
that is as boundless as the stars with plans for the destruction of man that is beyond
imagining… [wicked laugh]…” Just wait and see: the holy trinity Male/Female/Child,
the unchallenged gendered role matrix will be tackled by a super hero: the empowered
Youth who will vehemently dismantle gender, and thereby the nuclear family as we know
it and all sexist prejudice.
Hope crashes in again at a critical juncture in the narrative. Marked by shattered glass,
the only literal destruction Cohene shows, the frame narrows to a single keyhole in a sea
of blackness to reveal a piano in the distance. Father, Mother, and Child retreat in
sequence to this island of hope, stillness, and soulful release. Loneliness and fear yield
to solitary and introspective engagement. Their safety and peace transcends the family
home allowing them to embrace individualization, wisdom, and creation. The composer’s
conception echoes their narrative of desolation and despair as well as that of hope and
redemption, and transforms it into a poetic, stylized form that Father, Mother, and Child
encounter like a mirror. The score exposes, proposes, engages, uplifts, and challenges
them to confront themselves. The characters tap into their agency and the magnitude of
their potential to co-create their reality. They confront their own humanity and
inhumanity, thereby supporting an attempt to reach for a peaceful, spiritually vibrant
future.
“Music reveals all the thousand-fold transitional motions of our soul.” (Wackenroder)
Cohene’s score is her preeminent story-telling tool. Paired with her incisive editing/image
placement she pulls the unfolding narrative forward with hypnotic, melancholy, and
driving musical intentionality. Like a conductor calling forth the instruments and drawing
out the tone, colour, and tempi, Cohene unveils the tragedy with fastidious and
meticulous vigilance. Her rhythms are firm and well marked. The pulse of the content
pierces and penetrates consciousness. The images collide, meet, and cross-pollinate with
energy and confidence within this disciplined auditory framing. The quiet loud horror of
the collapse of unconditional love haunts and terrifies. The characters’ sorrow permeates
every frame, smearing the walls, windows, and doors: the architecture is marked with the
traumatic history.
Hollywood actors and cinematic convention submit to Cohene’s discrimination and
intention. While Father, Child, Mother are played by a series of different actors they
represent the archetype "Father, Child, Mother," iconic gendered signifiers. Yet, the fact
that Father, Child, Mother have many different faces deconstructs this "universality" and
particularizes the experience for us: there will be one face in there that reminds us of our
own singular mother and father, and also of our singular selves as children. Cohene’s
collage presents archetypal/intimate images that agitate our awareness, awakening the
coiled serpent in our heart and soul that bypasses our modes of denial, defense systems,
and coping mechanisms. We find ourselves exposed and self-aware. Our personal
histories resonate with that of the characters’. Like Child in the last frames, we walk
cautiously, almost fearfully, in the hallway of our dark childhood home. Child’s wrapped
present may end up in the trash in this powerless chapter of h/er life, but like the film
clips, this powerlessness can be retrieved, reclaimed, reinterpreted, reshaped, and
compassionately transformed for the future.
This essay was written by
Dany Lyne for the exhibition of SOMETHING BETTER at
YYZ Artists' Outlet, for the 2009
Images Festival.
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